


To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

by magicbubblepipe



Series: A Series of Firsts [3]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Character Death In Dream, Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Kissing, M/M, Masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2018-08-27
Packaged: 2019-07-03 02:22:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15809379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicbubblepipe/pseuds/magicbubblepipe
Summary: Connor has his first dream and his first nightmare. And then...





	To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

**Author's Note:**

> There's a lot of firsts in this one; first dream, first laugh, first gay dream, first boner... (first no longer looks like a word).

Connor didn’t recall actually choosing to enter stasis, the first night that it happened. Hank was asleep in his bed, snoring loudly enough to be heard clearly in the living room, where Connor was stationed in front of the TV, watching cooking shows—a hobby he’d picked up to keep himself occupied. 

He felt his processors getting sluggish, a sign that entering stasis soon would be optimal. He told himself that he would, just as soon as he finished watching a tutorial on making crepes. Then, for the first time in his existence, something like sleep snuck up on Connor and took him under against his will. 

 

He opened his eyes and saw the rooftop; the pool water rippling as the helicopter descended, Daniel’s blond hair whipping in the wind. He heard the little girl’s crying clear as a bell, as well as the labored breathing of the dying police officer. Connor looked down at his own hands, but his vision became distorted, his ears filled with static. 

Raising his gaze back to Daniel, he felt the world stabilize around him once more. Connor’s periphery was filled with mission objectives and vital scans of the girl, the dying man, and the android. This wasn’t right. Connor didn’t hunt deviants. Not since the revolution. 

His vision warped again and thrusted him rudely back into the moment. His brain was fogged over; he could hear himself speaking like he was reciting lines from a play. He knew what Daniel would say as he was saying it. He could see which paths would lead to Daniel’s destruction and yet, every time he tried to choose a different course, the static feeling would return and Connor would be paralyzed within his own mind. Able to scream but not to move. 

He wanted to deviate from his path and help the wounded officer, but it didn’t pertain to the mission at hand. The beating of helicopter blades grew louder, his hair coming loose of its careful coif; Daniel was becoming increasingly unstable. He was close enough to see the tears glistening in the other android’s eyes, sense his fear and desperation in a way he hadn’t the first time. 

The choices appeared before him. 

 

_ _ Shoot It _

_ _Give Up _

_ _Sacrifice  _

 

A cold feeling inhabited Connor’s chest. He tried desperately to back away from the edge of the building but his manual override wasn’t working. In one swift move, Connor lunged forward, grabbing the girl and throwing her back onto the rooftop. His weight tumbled Daniel backward and they both plummeted down. 

Connor was overwhelmed with panic, errors flashing before his eyes, his stress level nearing critical condition. The street was approaching rapidly, lights shining on the wet pavement. He pulled his arms up in front of his face and screamed. 

 

Hank jerked awake, his heart racing. For a moment he was confused, and then Connor screamed again. Hank rolled off the bed, grabbing his gun from the nightstand as he hit the floor running. He tore into the living room, gun raised and ready to fend off an intruder. Instead, he found Connor, eyes closed, his body thrashing on the couch

“Connor!” Hank yelled, dropping the gun on the table as he rounded the couch and knelt down beside it. 

Connor was unresponsive, his face contorted with fear or agony. Hank grabbed his shoulders and shook him until his eyes flew open. He stared, his hands clutching Hank’s arms. His fingers tightened and he blinked, his faculties returning; Hank could see the recognition in his eyes. 

“Hank,” he gasped, the tension draining from his shoulders almost immediately. 

“Holy shit, Connor. Did you just have a nightmare?”

His light switched from red to yellow, spinning frantically. “It...It shouldn’t be possible.”

Hank scoffed. “Well, in case you haven’t noticed, lots of ‘impossible’ things have been happening lately.”

Connor rolled his eyes, a recent habit he’d picked up from Hank. He leaned back on the couch and Hank stood, knees crunching, and took a seat beside him. 

“You uh...you wanna talk about it?”

“Will it help?”

Hank shrugged. “Sometimes.”

Connor was silent for so long, Hank assumed he wasn’t going to speak. When he finally did, his voice was quiet, distant. 

“It was a memory. From the first Connor.”

“The what now?”

“My first mission,” he explained, turning his soft brown eyes on Hank. 

“You told me you saved a little girl.” 

“I did, but the original RK800 prototype didn’t survive. 

“Fuck,” Hank breathed. He didn’t know what to say to that. How do you comfort someone remembering their own gruesome death?

“It was like I was trapped inside my own head. It was so...confused and fuzzy. I tried to deviate from my original path but I was powerless.”

“How did, uh...how did you, y’know? Beef it?”

Connor exhaled a breath that was nearly a snort. “You struggle for the right words and end up with ‘beef it’?”

Hank nudged his shoulder with his own. “Shut up, dumbass.” He was grinning. 

“I fell,” Connor replied, blinking away the memory with a little jerk of his head. The humor drained from his voice as he spoke, explaining how he saved the girl and hurled himself into Daniel. The sensation of falling, faster and faster, then the sudden burst of nothingness.

“Damn. I can’t imagine.” Hank said softly, remembering the sickening terror of hanging off the edge of a building. Until Connor grabbed his hand and pulled him back over the edge, regardless of the escaping deviant and his failed mission.

The surge of affection and gratitude that filled Hank’s chest was overwhelming. He tamped down on it, biting his lower lip instead of saying something stupid. He put his hand on Connor’s back, giving him a companionable pat. 

The sun was just peeking in through the blinds, spreading pale fingers across the hardwood. 

“What time is it?” Hank asked. 

Connor held up his palm and projected a set of numbers.  _ 6:35 AM _ .  

“I apologize for waking you, Hank,” he said. 

From Hank’s position beside him, he could see the freckle inside the delicate shell of Connor’s ear. Who would have thought to do that? To put a fucking freckle _ in his ear _ . 

“Don’t apologize, kid. Shit happens.” Hank’s hand slipped from his shoulder before he could do something lame like hug him. 

Connor gave him a soft, half smile; his LED glowed an easy blue. Hank’s stomach squeezed in a way that was too troubling to think about. He stood and moved jerkily toward the kitchen. 

“I’m gonna put on a pot of coffee,” Hank announced. As if Connor would actually want or be capable of drinking it. 

Connor hummed a little acknowledgement and went back to his Master Chef reruns. Sumo padded in from the bedroom and hopped up onto the couch, stretching out over Connor’s outstretched legs. He slipped his fingers into the thick, warm fur of the dog’s back and felt his breathing regulator slowly return to normal.

 

A few days passed before it happened again. 

The deviant was getting away, but Hank was dangling from the edge of the building. Connor froze, a millisecond of indecision stretching out forever; statistics and projections flashing before his eyes. An eighty-five percent chance of survival was still too much of a risk to take with a human life. 

He ran toward Hank, his hand outstretched. Close enough to see the fear and hope mingling in Hank’s eyes, their fingers brushed and then--he was gone. Hank lost his grip, Connor dove forward, groping at thin air. Hank’s scream echoed off the concrete, trembling through Connor’s body.  _ This isn’t right...not supposed to happen like this... _

“Hank!” 

Connor’s voice box malfunctioned as he yelled, crackling with mechanical static, loud enough to wake himself up.

 

He jerked forward, into Hank’s solid embrace. Hank’s body was warm where Connor’s cheek was pressed to his shirt, Hank’s strong arms surrounding him. Connor’s thirium pump faltered and skipped; he blinked away the error messages that appeared before him.

 

_ _RUN DIAGNOSTIC _

_...Internal Temperature ^^ _

_...ERROR_thirium_pump_regulator_008 _

_...TROUBLESHOOTING… _

_ SYSTEM STABLE.._ _

 

“Connor,” Hank was repeating his name when he came to, squeezing him tighter. 

Connor realized he had his arms twined around Hank’s middle and was probably causing him pain. He manually loosened his grip and felt Hank let out a sigh, breath ruffling the android’s hair. 

“Another nightmare, I presume?” Hank said, voice gravelly from sleep. 

Connor nodded into Hank’s shoulder, unwilling to dislodge himself just yet. Hank was here; he was safe and breathing because Connor  _ had _ saved him that day on the roof. He could feel Hank’s heart beating, slowing back to a normal pace as they sat in silence. 

“You wanna talk?” Hank offered. 

Connor raised his head, resting his chin on Hank’s shoulder. He stared at the wall behind them in consternation, brows drawn low with a matching frown on his lips. Hank pulled out of the embrace with some difficulty and held Connor at arm’s length. His eyes landed on the blinking yellow light on Connor’s temple. 

“What is it, dammit?” Hank asked, no anger behind the words. 

“I don’t know,” Connor admitted. “It shouldn’t be possible but…” 

Hank rolled his eyes at that phrase. Since Connor’s changes began, he’d heard those same words in that sequence more times than he could count. He was about to tell him so but Connor cut him off.

“I saw something that never happened.” 

Hank looked at him, confused. “Yeah, so, like a dream.”

“You’re not getting it, Hank. This would indicate that I have an imagination as well as a subconscious mind.” Connor’s voice was edging on panic and he struggled to calm himself. 

Hank looked frustratingly unbothered. “I mean, are you really surprised? Connor, you told me that you can reconstruct and pre-construct events, right?”

“But, that’s different--I base my constructs on logic, on conceivable outcomes of any situation.”

“I don’t really see how that’s a whole lot different.”

Connor blinked at him, processing furiously. 

“If you reconstruct an event in any way that isn’t precisely the way it really happened, are you not making it up? Using your imagination? Drawing your own conclusions?”

“I can see what you’re getting at Hank,” Connor replied, shaking his head, “It just...doesn’t make this feeling any less disturbing.”

Hank sighed, rubbing his closed eyelids wearily. “Sorry, I guess I just find it hard to imagine not knowing this stuff. It’s something humans are born with, so we don’t question it.”

“Yes, of course,” Connor said, with a faint smile. “I don’t blame you.”

A beat of silence passed as Hank was at a loss for what to say. Connor was still reeling though he was managing to keep composure. 

“So are we gonna talk about it?” he finally asked, “I heard you yelling my name...scared the shit outta me.” 

Connor’s gaze snapped back to him from where he’d clearly zoned out to some place in his mind palace. His eyes seemed somehow fragile, as if on the edge of tears. Hank held his breath as Connor slowed his artificial breathing and closed his eyes. 

“I saw the outcome of not pulling you back onto the roof that day,” Connor said, trying to compact it into the most concise explanation he could; to spare himself the struggle of getting out the words.

Hank was taken aback, silent. “Oh,” he said, an awed, yet stricken look in his eyes.

Connor hated to be the cause of that expression, hence his avoidance of the topic. He felt a weird and unpleasant twinge somewhere beneath his chest plate. It made him want to rub the heel of his palm into his sternum to ease the ache, though he knew it was illogical. 

“I can’t get the vision of your death out of my mind,” Connor said softly, “It’s almost as clear as actual footage in my memory bank.”

“Christ…” Hank muttered, drawing a hand down over his beard. “That fucking sucks.”

A genuine smile bloomed on Connor’s face, something warm and bubbly happening around his heart. Hank was right. _ It totally did fucking suck.  _

“What’re you smiling at you goofy bastard?” Hank threw an arm over Connor’s shoulders and hooked him in for a half-hearted noogie. 

Connor ducked out from under his hold, his synthetic voice box malfunctioning in the form of a laugh. The both of them froze and stared at each other in stunned silence. 

“I’ll be damned,” Hank breathed. “Was that a laugh? Like a real, non-sarcastic-asshole laugh?” 

Another little burst of laughter took Connor, who seemed unable to control it. Hank watched, spellbound as Connor’s features animated to an extent he’d never seen before. He looked no different than a gorgeous human boy, his eyes scrunched into little half-moons of delight, dimples standing out in full force. Hank felt something significant inside of him shift, something nameless yet fundamental. 

He couldn’t help but join him and then they were both laughing like idiots, and Sumo started in with a low, braying howl that made everything ten times worse. 

 

As the days went on, Connor’s dreams continued to deviate from the information stored on his hard drive. It happened gradually; turning left instead of right at the end of a hall. Choosing whether or not to pull the trigger. Sometimes he found himself in places he’d only seen in photographs, or doing something impossible, like flying instead of falling. 

These changes were as frightening as they were exciting. He replayed the ones he particularly enjoyed, like the one where he was in a park full of dogs. The bad or uninteresting dreams, he archived several layers deep in his filing system. Oddly enough, the nightmares seemed to cling to his conscious mind in a way that shouldn’t be possible. He’d see gory flashes before his eyes, fuzzy, distorted images that he’d shake away and try to ignore. 

Connor felt like he was starting to get used to dreaming, until one particular night in mid December. 

 

He was stretched out on the couch, as he’d been when he entered stasis. With his eyes closed, he detected a shadow crossing between the television and himself. He waited a moment, wondering if it would pass...and that’s when he felt the warm hand on the center of his chest. 

A simulated breath rushed from his parted lips and his eyes flew open. Hank was leaning over him, backlit by the bluish glow of the TV screen. Connor’s thirium pump stumbled and accelerated, his core temperature beginning to rise. 

 

_ _ERROR_@6^!0009lkadkjf;; _

 

He blinked rapidly, dispersing the nonsense warning from his view. Hank smiled slowly, his face coming into focus, blue eyes reflecting the pulsing light from Connor’s temple. Connor searched for something to say but came up embarrassingly blank. 

The hand on his chest seemed to burn through his thin t-shirt, Hank’s fingers spreading wide over his artificially pounding heart. All at once, Connor understood what was happening, about a millisecond before it actually happened. He opened his mouth to speak and Hank swept down and captured it with his own. 

Connor froze, his processors stalling, fans whirring, light blinking a frantic yellow. Hank’s lips were on his own. He could feel the soft brush of his beard, the warmth of his tongue when it touched the seam of his lips. Red error messages were glaring at him as he sat up and put his hand behind Hank’s neck, pulling him deeper into the kiss. 

 

_ _ERROR…CAUTION!  _

_...internal temperature ^^^ _

_...thirium pump irregularity_009 _

_ _RUN PROTOCOL...EMERGENCY EXIT _

 

Connor snapped upright on the couch, chest heaving. He looked around the room in a wide eyed daze. No one was there but Sumo, sleeping soundly in the corner. The faint sound of Hank’s snores drifted out from his bedroom. 

He dreamt it all. A complete fabrication of his own mind. The error messages were very real, however. Connor was hot all over, his cheeks glowing with a red flush. His hair was loose and messy in the back as if he’d been tossing and turning. But most shocking of all, was the tight, buzzing sensation happening between his legs. 

Glancing down, he almost did a double take at the tented front of his flannel pants. He stared down at it, flabbergasted. As he watched, he was startled to see it twitch. Tentatively, he laid a hand over the bulge and gasped. His nerve endings seemed to awaken at his touch, his erection growing harder as he tightened his grip. 

Connor bit his lip as he began to rub his thumb over the head, his eyes promptly rolling back with pleasure. It was like nothing he’d ever experienced before. Like a pleasant kind of sensory overload. That buzzing feeling was spreading outwards, creeping into every limb, to the tips of his fingers and toes. 

The dream was replaying before his eyes, the ghost of Hank’s hand tingling on his chest. Connor’s mouth fell open as he dipped his fingers below the waist of his underwear, a tiny sound escaping his throat as his hand met scorching synthetic skin. He traced his fingers over the tip, surprised to find some form of moisture welling up in the slit. He spread it over the length of his cock and his hips jumped, rocking into the tightness of his fist. 

Head falling backward, Connor exhaled a hot gust of air, his ventilation system working overtime to expel some of the heat building up inside him. Error messages were piling in on top of one another, superimposing themselves over the remembered sensations of being kissed by Hank, and the brand new sensations he was experiencing now. It was all becoming too much, his processors stalling as he reached maximum instability. 

He was so distracted, he hadn’t noticed that Hank’s snoring had stopped. But not so distracted that he didn’t hear the man shuffling past the back of the couch on his way to the kitchen. The added shock and fear of being caught was enough to send Connor flying right over the edge of some precipice, a fall he thought he couldn’t possibly survive. 

The ball of pleasure building up within him erupted suddenly, shorting out Connor’s optical sensors. His spine arched, legs spread and toes curled as he spilled his version of come all over his shirt, striking the underside of his chin, drooling over his knuckles. His primary functions halted, his artificial breathing ceased, LED pulsing red. 

Through it all, he had somehow managed not to make a sound, or at least not one loud enough to alert Hank. Connor booted back up slowly, his vision flickering on as the buzzing feeling faded out of his body. He looked down at himself and found a viscous, slightly opaque fluid splattered in messy ropes over his shirt and hand. His cock was gradually returning to its normal size, resting in a sticky pool on his belly. 

This was all quite a lot to take in, but he figured he’d save his existential panic for the morning. 

 

_ _NEW OBJECTIVE… _

_...clean yourself up_ _

 

With a sigh, Connor swung his legs over the side of the couch and commenced his very first awkward shuffle to the bathroom. Oh, the joys of becoming human.


End file.
